Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

First of all - A quick thank you to the makers of Dolphin for creating a Wii/Gamecube emulator. I can't even begin to understand how it works, but it does, and I'm incredibly grateful for it.

I do however have a pretty major issue with using the emulator - Even with everything set as low as it goes in the Dolphin options, games such as Mario Party 9, New Super Mario bros and Mario Kart simply refuse to run higher than 40 FPS (dipping into the low 30-20's at times). It makes for a pretty miserable experience when everything is in slow-motion, and I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

The specifics on the PC are, according to what I can find on the forums, adequate:

The CPU is a Intel i5 750 (at stock 2.67 GHz), the GPU is a ATI 5850 and the RAM is from Corsair, with a grand total of 4GB. From what I can find on the wiki, it should be enough for the games mentioned above, but for some reason, it isn't.

Attempting to change the native resolution upwards does not result in a drastic framedrop, making me believe this is purely a CPU issue - But the CPU should be able to, with all the Dolphin settings I can find on the Wiki/performance page set to low, manage 60 FPS.

Am I missing something obvious?

You can't get more than 40 FPS with New Super Mario bros ?
It's very "light" game for dolphin unless you setup multiplayer (with your friends or family members)

(10-20-2012, 11:44 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]You can't get more than 40 FPS with New Super Mario bros ?
It's very "light" game for dolphin unless you setup multiplayer (with your friends or family members)

You're correct, I forgot to mention that! The goal was to have a total of 3 players, which is what we tried to get working. But it quickly became apparent in Mario Kart (Tried solo - 30 FPS), Mario bros (2 people - 40'ish FPS) and Mario Party 9 (3 players + CPU - 30 FPS on Board, same in minigames) that something was incredibly wrong.

Nothing wrong
Your CPU is too slow for multiplayer . 2 options for you :
_Upgrade your CPU to i5 2500k + OC 4.4GHz or 3570k + OC 4.2GHz
_Overclock (OC) your current CPU . But it's still not fast enough for Mario Kart / Mario Party 9 + multiplayer

(10-20-2012, 11:59 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Nothing wrong
Your CPU is too slow for multiplayer . 2 options for you :
_Upgrade your CPU to i5 2500k + OC 4.4GHz or 3570k + OC 4.2GHz
_Overclock (OC) your current CPU . But it's still not fast enough for Mario Kart / Mario Party 9 + multiplayer

Oh my, seems that I severally underestimated the amount of CPU-power Dolphin requires! I can't justify a CPU-upgrade considering it runs modern games fine, and if even OC'ing won't get the games running smoothly in multiplayer - guess that is the end of the line for me!

Thank you for your quick replies admin89, and I hope you have a pleasant day.

If you overclock your current CPU to 3.6GHz (do at your own risk) , i'm sure New Super Mario Bros will run full speed with 2 players . Don't know how it perform with 3 players but you should give it a try

It's because you're using efb copy to ram. Change it to efb copy to texture and edit the games .ini files to enable efb copy to texture and your framerate will more than double.

Quote:Change it to efb copy to texture and edit the games .ini files to enable efb copy to texture and your framerate will more than double.

I'm pretty sure "EFB copy to Ram" does not hurt performance like you said
Maybe it kills 1-2FPS or 3-4 FPS (depend on the game)
Nevermind , i just test it on NSMB ( 50 vs 90 FPS ) Weird ...It's almost no difference on Xenoblade or TLS

Quote:Nevermind , i just test it on NSMB ( 50 vs 90 FPS ) Weird ...It's almost no difference on Xenoblade or TLS

Yup. The performance hit depends on what the game is doing with the efb ram copies (if anything).

84 FPS with 2 players , EFB copy to texture , 2.5X IR , no AA , 16X AF , Widescreen Hack
It seems I was wrong at the beginning
Edit : 78FPS with 3 players